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Vacancy Announcement: Consultant

Consultancy Title: HIV Data Scientist Consultant

Section/Division/Duty Station: Division of Data, Analytics, Planning and Monitoring (DAPM, Data & Analytics, Health and HIV Unit) New York HQ

Duration: July 2025 to July 2026

Home/ Office Based: REMOTE 

About UNICEF

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

BACKGROUND

Purpose of Activity/Assignment: 

The Division of Data, Analytics, Planning and Monitoring (DAPM) was created in 2019 to strengthen decision making and organisational learning across UNICEF. It sets the corporate direction for evidence informed analysis, strategic planning, programme monitoring and performance management, ensuring that every programme result rests on rigorous data and rights based practice. Within the Division, the Data and Analytics Team (DAT) serves as the organisation’s primary source of global statistics on children, curating administrative records, household surveys, geospatial information and other large data sets, maintaining their quality and public availability through data.unicef.org, and driving investments that help national statistical systems measure what matters for children.

The Health and HIV Unit (HHU) within DAPM focuses on leveraging data and analytics to strengthen health systems, improve programmatic decisions, and enhance outcomes in immunization, HIV, and maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health. HHU is central to tracking progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, ensuring data-driven program improvements, and promoting UNICEF’s role as a global leader in health and HIV data for children. One of the key initiatives managed by HHU is AHEAD (Actionable Health Analytics for Local Decision-Making), a flagship analytics initiative that transforms routine and survey data into timely, subnational insights to strengthen primary health care and equity-focused planning. The initiative supports countries in identifying service delivery gaps, tracking progress, and using data more effectively to drive local action and improve outcomes for women, children, and adolescents.

Under the general direction of the Statistics Officer for HIV/AIDS, the Consultant will provide technical support to expand the HIV analytics capability of AHEAD. The consultant will support the design and implementation of automated data pipelines that ingest and harmonize HIV-related data from routine systems and household surveys, ensuring quality and reproducibility. They will conduct subnational analyses to identify geographic and population-specific coverage gaps, build reproducible code to support core indicators and visualizations, and generate analytical products and briefs tailored to country needs.

Additional responsibilities include contributing to the analysis of service disruptions and unmet need, supporting country offices through direct technical assistance and strengthening the underlying data infrastructure for HIV monitoring. This work will accelerate the availability and use of actionable HIV data in countries prioritized under ongoing grants and contribute to the broader goal of embedding high-frequency analytics into UNICEF’s programming and policy engagement.

Scope of Work: 

The consultant will contribute to the design of a modular R-based analytics package that supports reproducible analysis and visualization of HIV-related indicators across priority countries.

In collaboration with other team members, the consultant will conduct subnational analyses to identify service gaps and disparities and prepare tailored country deliverables (including briefs, and slide decks).

To support continuity and scalability, the consultant will document all workflows, maintain version-controlled repositories, and contribute to internal knowledge products.

Key Deliverables:

•     Functional data pipelines and scripts for automated ingestion, cleaning, and harmonization of HIV-related routine and survey data

•     Subnational analytic code modules and templates for producing dashboards, briefs, and maps within the AHEAD platform

•     Country-specific analytical products (e.g., slide decks, briefs, data packs) tailored to country priorities and data availability

•     GitHub repository with documented and version-controlled code, data dictionaries, and workflow guides

•     Final handover package, including all code, cleaned datasets, documentation, and recommendations for future enhancements

Deliverables will be reviewed monthly, and timelines for each will be refined during the inception phase in alignment with UNICEF priorities and ongoing workstreams.

Terms of Reference / Specific Deliverables

Pilot Modern Data Science Tools and Technologies

• Summary report detailing specific recommendations to enhance AHEAD and other ongoing projects within HIV portfolio  through exploratory analysis of data science tools 

August 31, 2025

Refactored code for HIV AHEAD package.      

• Github README and technical notes detailing refactored R codes aligning with DAPM code standards  

September 30, 2025

Supporting compilation of data for HIV

• Excel spreadsheet with newly extracted country data from HMIS

October 31, 2025

Analytical Tools for Data Triangulation across routine systems and UNICEF databases   

• Analytical tools (R/Python notebooks) to triangulate data are proposed to enhance existing data pipelines

November 30, 2025

Development of an application for HIV AHEAD slide deck generation   

• Automated AHEAD outputs are developed using the most suitable technology   

February 13, 2026

Qualifications

(1) Education

Advance University Degree (Masters)  in computer science, public health, Data Science, Big Data, Applied Statistics, Bioinformatics, or a closely related computational or health analytics field.

A first level university degree   in combination with six years of qualifying and relevant experience may be accepted in lieu of the education requirement.

(2) Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required:

Work Experience:

•     At least 4 years of experience in data science and analytics, preferably in the health sector.

•     Documented proficiency in both R and Python as well as data visualization tools (Shiny, Plotly, Streamlit, Tableau, Infogram).

•     Experience conducting statistical analysis including interrupted time series (ITS) design and regression analysis.

•    Proven experience in data engineering, including the design and implementation of data processing pipelines and cloud infrastructure.

•     Experience with Git/GitHub for version control and CI/CD for collaborative development.

•   Hands on experience with cloud services for data storage and processing, including but not limited to Databricks, Azure SQL Database, Google Cloud Spanner and BigQuery.

•     Proven knowledge of automated data acquisition via APIs and web-scraping. 

•     Experience with machine learning models for supervised and unsupervised learning.

•     Experience working in or with low- and middle-income countries is highly desirable.

•     Industry certifications related to cloud services and/or data visualization are highly desirable.

Competencies:

•     Technical knowledge of modern data science approaches, tools, and practices.

•     Excellent communication skills, with the ability to present complex data insights to non-technical stakeholders.

•     Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently.

•     Ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams and diverse stakeholders.

Requirements: 

Completed profile in UNICEF's e-Recruitment system and

• Upload copy of academic credentials
• Financial proposal that will include/ reflect :
  • the costs per each deliverable and the total lump-sum for the whole assignment (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference.
  • travel costs and daily subsistence allowance, if internationally recruited or travel is required as per TOR.
  • Any other estimated costs: visa, health insurance, and living costs as applicable.
  • Indicate your availability
• Any emergent / unforeseen duty travel and related expenses will be covered by UNICEF.
• At the time the contract is awarded, the selected candidate must have in place current health insurance coverage.
• Payment of professional fees will be based on submission of agreed satisfactory deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.

U.S. Visa information:

With the exception of the US Citizens, G4 Visa and Green Card holders, should the selected candidate and his/her household members reside in the United States under a different visa, the consultant and his/her household members are required to change their visa status to G4, and the consultant’s household members (spouse) will require an Employment Authorization Card (EAD) to be able to work, even if he/she was authorized to work under the visa held prior to switching to G4.  

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results. View our competency framework at: Here

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment. 

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check. 

Remarks:  

Individuals engaged under a consultancy will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants. Consultants are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws. 

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.